Featured Image Credit: Rockstar Games
Topics: GTA, GTA 6, Grand Theft Auto, Rockstar Games, Take-Two
Yesterday, something quite remarkable happened.
Team Cherry’s long-awaited Hollow Knight: Silksong finally landed after a whopping eight-year wait for fans.
Certainly, that’s remarkable but that’s not exactly the event I’m referring to.
Instead, I’m referencing the impact Hollow Knight: Silksong’s release had on major storefronts.
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Steam, the Nintendo eShop, PlayStation Store and Xbox Store all experienced outages as user demand exceeded what servers were capable of, with fans clamouring to buy the new title.
There’s one major reason why this happened; Silksong wasn’t available to pre-order.
The vast majority of titles can be pre-ordered these days and some even pre-loaded, which eases demand come release day.
Silksong didn’t have this, resulting in hundreds of thousands of attempted simultaneous purchases.
This meant that temporarily, many couldn’t buy the game or access their purchase.
GAMINGbible’s Olly Smith purchased Silksong on Switch but didn’t actually have his purchase show up until some time later.
Naturally, this has generated discussion amongst GTA VI fans as that’s easily one of the most anticipated games of all-time.
It’s likely GTA VI demand will far exceed that for Hollow Knight: Silksong which begs the question: should we expect store outages on launch day?
I’m leaning towards no. GTA VI will most definitely be made available for pre-order at some point and it’s practically guaranteed that it’ll be accompanied by a pre-load.
Already, there’s a pre-pre-load on console, allowing fans to download 328.8MB of files that’ll help prepare their system for a later pre-load.
It’s a bit pointless, but it shows that Rockstar Games is already in full prep mode.
It’s something that’s easing fans’ concern.
“If Hollow Knight: Silksong is having issues at the online stores due to demand vastly overloading the servers, how bad is GTA VI going to be at launch day in terms of merely downloading it?” asked Reddit user Life_Is_All_Nothing.
“GTA VI will have pre-orders and pre-loading, so shouldn't be an issue,” replied Muted_Pair1769.
“GTA VI launch issues will be minimised due to preloading. The Online release, though? We'll be lucky to be able to play at all for a week,” added fowlflamingo raising an interesting point.
Next question is this: when are those pre-orders opening up, Rockstar?